Let's Talk About Mental Health, But Let's Not Say Anything Meaningful About It

End the stigma. End the persecution. End the long decades of rotting lives at the bottom being forgotten and ignored. But whatever you do, don't point out how mental health has been adversely affected by the modern world, because that's where we make our profits. Let's not stigmatize the status-obsessesed, the oversharers, the internet addicts, sociopaths, borderline sociopaths, the narcissists, the identity fetishists... in short let's just change the perception by stating that it's not the ill person's fault they're ill, and give them a modicum of respect, and continue on our deranged way. Some day we'll all be mentally ill, if we aren't already.

So let's have a mental health awareness month, a couple corporate-backed mental health awareness movements every year, some nice infographics, some nice ads, some good progressive and compassionate copy. Let's take some real steps, let's end the crisis before it gets worse, or at least make a pretty big deal about acknowledging it. Just let's not pry into where it's coming from, or why more people than ever are getting ill. Keep condemning the suicides and the silence. Don't look over there at the causes: that way lies madness.

Poverty, mental illness, illiteracy, substance addiction, lifestyle addiction, non-normative sexuality (itself a freaky frontier that's easy to support especially if you want nothing to do with it but want to appear a progressive and compassionate person), and  megatons of other stuff. It's no longer anybody's fault. Those who declare it a function of individual responsibility, as well as those who declare it a function of societal responsibility, are entrenched in ideology. The truth is far simpler than anyone wants to acknowledge: they're all Bad Things. Mental illness is just a Bad Thing, that needs Attention, and requires Awareness. The problem is that mental illness not photogenic. It doesn't respond well to attention. It's really, really ugly and it's got deep roots and deeper pockets.

Health in general in decline. Increased incidences of diseases of affluence, first world problems like anxiety, a weakening breed finding new ways to pity itself. Dementia rears its ugly head. Cancer from years of worry-free high-living catching up to us. The natural, polluted world with its natural conclusions. Let's keep consuming so the economy doesn't falter. Let's not ask questions. Let's never wake up from our nightmare as it gets darker and darker.

People are less mindful than ever. Overconnected to everything via the internet. Bombarded with images of opulence and excess that they will never know, for which they are programmed to have an insatiable lust. Lost in meaninglessness, with false meaningfulness leading them astray. Conditioned to worship at the altar of Mammon. Real vs. VR. Terrorism vs War. Inequality is Solved. Internet sickness. Quality of Life. 12 Steps to a Better You. Fired by Text Message. 10 Cute Cats That Will Cure Your Blues. The Babylon System is winning, the world is changing, nobody seems to give a shit. Money rules everything, people with money call the shots, and most people believe their half-truths. Meanwhile a million unchecked distractions clamor for everyone's attention, and the individual (despite the hype of optimists) has never felt so insignificant in a world of Social Networks, Big Ideas, and Batshit Maniacs. There's no fucking respect, I'll tell ya.

In my opinion it's no mystery why people are getting all fucked up and sick. They can't police their own thoughts, they can't control their government and corporate sanctioned addictions to legal substances and activities, they can't escape without losing their future. People are generally more separated by technology than they are brought together by it. A whole generation is living a shitty, loveless, poor existence wrought by their elders and blamed on them – and I'm sure they'll turn out fine and well-adjusted despite this, but they take a sickening amount of shit from a world so unfair it's parodic. Suicides everywhere... a sinking quality of life, urban hellscapes, the decline of the natural world and a bunch of insane technofucks claiming we should divorce ourselves further from our roots, as if our current divergence isn't at least partly at fault for the insane clusterfuck we've wandered into. Jargon rules the day, but it never saved one life.

And the isolation. Alone in a sea of identity, tired of the cult of identity, feeling like nobody and nothing and stumbling through a life ruled by the pleasures of others and the whims of the greedy, powerful, and detached. Faces are masks, genuine humanity is in decline and retreating to the quiet places. Hope is dying along with mental healthiness. There is nobody to talk to, but everyone wants to speak out about how it isn't shameful to be mentally ill. Of course not, but the cure isn't in reinforcing the status quo, just like how all the cures to all of what ails us as a species are not in keeping things comfortably similar to 'how it is'. We don't want to look into what's harming us, like the obstinate addicts we are. Maybe things seem worse than they are, maybe I'm a shitty blogger and an alarmist, but things're bad enough and breeding vast populations of stunted narcissistic sociopaths incapable of human emotion or connection – populations in all age groups, not just the young tech-savvy millenials who already have tons of opprobrium piled onto them coupled with an increasingly grim outlook.

The world is increasingly soulless and irreal. Appearances have replaced qualities. Abandon all hope, because nobody gives a shit anymore. The pressure to succeed can only be met by dishonesty and combativeness, the competition is severe, the world is at the edge. Don't ask any questions. Don't step out of line. Don't live - exist. Just repost the memes, make those donations happen, and keep ignoring the people you know who are sinking, the people you pass on the street who are already sunk... keep your eyes on the newsfeed. Let the internet do the good works for you. This is the least self-aware era and it needs to be ripped violently in half by a comprehensive, blood-thirsty, no-prisoners satire before we destroy everything of value and premise our future on misery, ignorance, and disgust. The time to wake up is fast approaching, and a world of comatose automatons will greet it with indifference.

The Rhetoric of the Damned: Will Most of Us Die as Losers?

To be quite honest the Ancien Regime never really died, and its mutant legacy is currently busy snorting coke and fucking up the social, political, ecological, and economic systems of the world. The guillotines might have had a few busy years in the 1790s, but the next hundred years showed little improvement for the average European, Asian, African, or American (until slavery was abolished and new systems of degradation, fear-mongering, and suffering needed to be invented). Let's not even get into sub-geographical realities, reference imperialism, or do anything in fact. From this slightly more aware and gentler age, the past should look like utter barbarism and chaos, a time when suffering was life for the now much-ballyhoed "99%" without much amelioration of any sort. If anything, they were encouraged to be proud of their ability to endure by people much softer and wealthier than them. Back in the glory days, children were still widely exploited as little slaves and their parents were stuck in wage traps or servitude-by-any-other-name that make modern wage slavery in a midwestern McDonald's look like a paid vacation.

What is funny is that people look to the past as this time of glory, and some purveyors of history have repeatedly tried to whitewash the immense and crushing misery that the average human had to endure for thousands of years, and injustices and genocides and slaughters that went into it. To this day, there are people who would insist that World War 1 was just and necessary and not at all a mindless waste of millions of lives and tonnes of material, that taught the world no lessons at all. Every year we fail to learn from the past, and the few voices exhorting us to give a shit are ignored because modern culture is not about reflection or realistic undistorted perceptions, and especially not about revolution. Modern society is primarily about selling two things: distraction and delusion, which unite in blessed complacency and indifference. There are no alternatives, and Marcuse was right (not in any base or political 'Marxist' sense but logically) to say that postmodern society was one dimensional. Today we would be lucky to have one dimension instead of our kaleidoscopic non-dimension. Let's not even talk about the history we have of psychotic and irrational wastage of natural resources, or the insane and ruthless extermination of multiple species throughout history – which makes the current semi-apologetic/apathetic model of habitat destruction and ecological rape look almost benign.

2013: Coming Highlights via Crisis Nightmare 3000

2012 was a pretty good year. There was plenty to see, talk about, and worry about. I'm not going to waste anyone's time with how great 2012 was. I'm not going to elaborate on how great a year it was for just about everyone to to feel truly offended, scared, or wronged. I sure felt the winds of change, and I bet I'm not the only one forced to watch, for merely one small instance, Facebook turn into less and less of a place for drunk students' idiocy and more and more of a place for self-aggrandizing politics (a learned behavior) and doomed verbal slap fights (an inherent characteristic) between imaginary monsters in the dark (???).

As great a year as 2012 was for getting miffed about rumors of rumors and unfounded quackery, 2013, by all estimations, will prove to be even better, with exceptional levels of panic. I am only a small and limited individual, fearful of the Lord and His hatred of our Eternal Imperfection, but even I can see the sort of wickedness that will come from the foremost voids of collective moral and existential mania:

- The use of stem cells from aborted fetuses to create so-called 'ethical' meat products such as nerveless chickens and baby sandwiches.
- The use of stem cells from aborted fetuses to make PepsiCo products even tastier and healthier!
-The use of stem cells from aborted fetuses to power a giant abortion center/bath house/tolerance indoctrination center/abattoir.
-All national anthems will be replaced, by global plebiscite, with Psy's 'Gangnam Style'.
-The use of rogue-harvest stem cells from living babies to make homosexual, gay, queer, transexual, questioning or pansexual clones of all new babies.
-Global decriminalization of all drugs / abolition of all drug offenses except alcoholism, which will be heavily prohibited.
-Upcoming mandatory biochips for all newborns, which will be specifically geared to cause autism, homosexuality and socialist tendencies in all newborns. All younger generations, regardless of biochips, will continue to be inceasingly sissy.
-Justin Beiber's official crowning as The King of Rock and Roll; retirement ceremonies for outgoing king Elvis Presley.
-Prayer inoculations made mandatory for non-atheists.
- I.E. 10 becomes mandatory web browser; Firefox users are shot to death in droves in the streets across most of the known world.
-President Obama, as he kisses Angela Merckel on the lips during a pagan pansexual cocaine infanticide orgy (including aliens, notable elites and celebrities, and Vladimir Putin) will sign into a law a fourty-term presidency applicable only to himself or any of his socialist ideologues.
-Stem cell-powered mass transit, gun incinerators, and electric vehicle charging stations. 
-Stem cell-powered solar energy. 
-Stem cell-powered wind power. 
-Stem cell-moderated nuclear fission with options for stem cell-stabilized nuclear fusion.
-Mandatory global 'sin hour', details forthcoming, likely to include excerpts by sin experts De Sade and  C'Thulhu.
-Libertarians proven entirely right about everything and promptly imprisoned and/or muzzled en masse. Ayn Rand enshrined as underground deity. Libertarianism outlawed.
-Christmas 2013 will be retooled to celebrate an exciting blend of non-Judeo-Christian world religions and non-straight-monogamous sexual orientations. Also, more emphasis on shopping and consumer culture!
-The moon will be settled by a coalition of European and Chinese evolutionists with left-leaning socialist tendencies who will farm organically-sourced stem cells for vague and shadowy purposes.
-Mandatory world-wide one-child policy. Extra children will be rendered into fuel for mass transit, space programs, or returned to the parents as an Ethical Flavinoid Generator – all excretions can then legally be sold to the state via a closed market for an equal, fair, and regulated price.
-Hipster movement greatly compromised and weakened by increasingly worrisome internal power squabbles, advancing the arts by five months.
-Completion of the war on Christmas – total casualties: Christmas. 
-Carburators will be outlawed on pain of death forcing many to adapt or starve, paralyzing carburator-based economies. Fuel injectors will no longer be for 'sissies' and women: they will be mandatory. Automobiles built prior to 1950 will be exempt but heavily taxed.  
- Any and all muscle cars will be recycled into public park art projects, luxury vehicles will be recycled into bus stations, buses, and public benches.
-The use of stem cells from aborted fetuses to fund Al-Qaeda and Al-QaedaCo-related entities.
-Sex addiction will be recognized as a veritable (taxable) disability, as will necrophilia; perverts worldwide, it is theorized, will be coddled and enabled by corrupt and morally-apathetic governments.
-Millionaires and billionaires will be taxed upwards of 75% per annum. Proceeds will go to struggling socialists, funding OWS protests, and hippies.
-Any new jobs created by the rich will be immediately taxed into the ground, and all proceeds will be used to keep drug addicts from suffering withdrawals.
-Tobacco smokers to be punished by instant death in many countries, smoking prohibited in the rest.
-"Soylent Green is people!"
-Public stonings will not only become a hot new meme, but enshrined under sweeping free speech reforms.
-Wal-Mart given a seat in the UN, kicking out Bhutan.
-Consumer goods will be sustainably harvested from the stem cells of aborted fetuses; global rights for non-laboratory non-human lifeforms; "New Murder Laws Get Poachers into Hot Water!"
-Men will no longer be allowed on public transit and will also pay an additional 50% in auto-insurance because of their inherent emotional instability as discovered through internet social media such as forums, blogs, and Youtube.
-Adult males will also be prohibited from consuming beer, watching sports, or masturbation. Men will also be subject to random curfews, spot-checks, and will be prohibited from loitering.
-Mandatory, bi-weekly public mocking and flogging of all artists, including self-styled artists.
-Catholicism will be replaced in situ with Feminism- doctrinaire rejection of birth control will be replaced with mandatory castration and partial-castration for heterosexual males.
-Facebook will be granted all rights to its users, including power of attorney, and unlimited licensing of all uploaded content with no concessions to the end-user.
-All IP addresses to be made public, resulting in severe but mixed changes to the Internet, and a new niche for powerusers.
- Banks 'too large to fail' will be granted explicit legal and diplomatic immunity.
-Privatization of nature; mandatory, global human genome tax.
-Single women without children will be able to claim compensation from unsatisfactory sexual partners and will have birth control, contraceptives, and abortions paid for (in full) by their governments. Countries not adhering to this global mandate will have their national anthem changed to Carly Rae Jepson's 'Call Me Maybe'
-Texas will be placed under martial law until every ranch is empty, a co-operative enterprise, or farming alpaca wool and soybeans.
-All leather jackets will be replaced with pastel coloured cardigans, any vendor found to be selling black market leather goods will be flogged and mocked in public, and re-educated in a Tolerance Centre.
-Nerd movement gains critical momentum, delaying any theoretical technological singularity by more than 100 years. 
-Feed lot model expanded to feeding the poor; "Low Standards; High Expectations - The Profit of Poverty"
-All world religions outlawed, all higher beings to be replaced with notable celebrities, scientists, and political leaders. Dissension will not be tolerated: private residences will be periodically monitored for signs of worship.
-Mandatory quota of internet slang for all publications in any language to encourage youth engagement. (A modern translation of Charles Dickens' 'David Copperfield' will begin this trend, a neo-modern treatment of E.L. James' '50 Shades of Grey' will prompt the new industry standard. Homer's 'Teh 0DY$$3Y' will establish sales records.)
-Goods manufactured in the East will now be sold in the East, and Eastern citizens will use money sourced from Western taxpayers to afford said goods, creating a self-aware form of global capitalism. The West will be forced to produce its own electronics, garments, and cheap trinkets. Corporate elite will balk at decreased unemployment figures and go back to lovingly stroking their industrial robots and moneybags.
-Pharmaceutical drugs will be outlawed and replaced with what are now unfairly referred to as 'illicit and/or illegal drugs' with a decided emphasis on psychedelics.
-The West will stop paying attention to the rest of the world, and, in a stunning reversal, begin to focus on itself.
-Resultant drug addicts are confirmed for serious government coddling!
-Stem cells from aborted fetuses will replace any and all bullets manufactured since 1898. Modern bullets will be powered by the new ethical physics of hyper-abortion.
-Completion of secret project "The End of Men".
-All firearms unrelated to ethical hunting and/or safety training will be outlawed with no exceptions. Any persons refusing will be fired upon and killed by police or soldiers, who will be be armed or overarmed in accordance with New World Order directive HMO-SX-14 s.12
-Dec 21, 2013: The Brony Rebellion.

And that, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg.

User Comment Rodeo: Multiple Choice City

The UCR Mk.II picked up a hugely lucrative article about a social studies professor who forced her entire second year sociology class into taking a geography pop quiz. Just a purely innocent decision which had no loaded stakes, made by a disinterested, scientific-minded professor with no agenda up her sleeve – forced on a classroom of modern students. Said class failed dismally at accurately labeling countries, provinces, capitols, and even broad geographical regions. The UCR Mk.II almost crashed analyzing the over 200 comments. The irony sensor burned out too many times, and I had to deactivate it lest I ran out of spares.

It seemed to me (and still seems to me) a monstrous project, but I will gladly take it on. There is nothing more entertaining than watching idiots go at their bogeys, and watching the poor moderates waste their time. What's really important, in the end, is that everyone tends to just have fun. So kick back, get a stiff drink, forget how old or young you are, and indulge in some senseless ageism. And remember: more than 200 hundred comments resulted from poor test scores about an unrelated subject in what is a small sample of post-secondary students. This is, in more ways than one, an example of why the west is withering and how the internet is making it worse (or making it appear worse). Don't get offended, let's go on a rodeo:

The comments flew in fast and heavy. Reading them almost caved-in my sense of hope. It was brutal. I missed some doozies, no doubt, but there is never time to think when it comes to a User Comment Rodeo. There is only action. There is only the lassoing of choice screengrabs, and hoping they turn out to be priceless. I warn ye who would read this: this is going to be lengthy and uncomfortable, and the levels of ageism, ignorance, and bigotry unveiled herein will drive you into hysteria. If you had any faith, in the young or old, turn back now. The world needs your optimism more than ever. As for me: I don't care, I'm not even paid to do this. Maybe I'll get a shot or two in.

You know what's kind of depressing? You don't? I – Ah, fuck it. I prefer cuss-words anyway, since they make a solid point, frighten puritans and squares, and require almost no intelligence to be used effectively. The internet can still educate. It can also mislead, trivialize, infantilize, and stupefy. Reader, mark well the words of these and following User Comments. Note the vast problems they bring up, and their generally piss-poor sentence construction. Ah, the familiar smells of lazy rhetoric and half-baked idiocy. Is this crisis in education new? Is this a beautiful moment in our collective existence? Will the bleating objections of the masses lead to a new era of mental rigor?

These were the 'upvotes' in reddit-speak (RIP Swartz, I never knew ye, but you deserved better). These were the king comments. These were choice, juicy, apropos, and insightful beyond all the rest. Observe the beautiful spectre of ageism rising from the rabble. One can hardly blame students who are prejudged en masse as morons, merely for existing in a troubled and complex era and for their casual use of advanced electronic devices. It seems as if everyone has given up on them. Everyone except for the oilsands, that is – and when one is scientifically illiterate, one eats up greenwashing with both hands, and feels great about it. The modern explosion of ideologues is due to lack of mental rigor, but if education was so impeccable in the 50's, 60's, and 70's then why are so many middle-aged people so insufferable in their harmful, hateful, and ignorant opinions – why are they so vulnerable to fast-food politics, misinformation, and ideology? Look what they threw away to live comfortably. It's cute, because the coming generations get to live in not only mental, but also economical, physical, and environmental squalor. No wonder they don't give a fuck.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Takes in This an Interest

My unaccountably small audience, YouTube has become self-aware!

You can imagine how painful the internet is for anyone who is not YouTube or Facebook. Go ahead, imagine, and I bet it feels good. That's good pain right there. Wait! This is a disaster! In my bombastic, semi-Colbert-semi-internerd style, I warn you that this new self-inflating digital economy is actually a bubble, and may burst!

I just made that discovery, when I was as usual researching the decline of my era on the internet, on YouTube itself. I realized that my sources could be improved a little, but more importantly I learned that:

No wise body on earth can watch the next two complete videos in sequence. I have prepared them as a perfect deathtrap. To even attempt to complete the watching of either (let alone both) will probably result in an exploded head, internet's Homestar Runner-style. I watched a bit of either, and I'm not going to review the experience here – YouTube's comment sections, here I come!– but this is basically the sort of challenge that is a long, subtle joke about the world right now. What makes it a challenge is not finishing it, even, but comprehending the exact style of your death this entails.

The first sequence in this challenge will serve, at most institutions, as an introduction to internet politics.

Now, the second is an advanced choice, doubles as internet politics 1102, and is a reckless move on my part; I feel a certain duty to the internet so am forced to post it in sequence, with a long introduction link sentence.

In an alternative YouTube Video Sequence, you may laugh harder – but you will learn less, and your mind will be less damaged. Feel free to comment about your general sense of dread, bigoted sense of superiority, or experience with the challenge! As a scientist, I may be able to make some use of your otherwise pointless generosity.